Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I will focus on similar points to Senator Crown with regard to the rights of Northern citizens to vote in the Republic. While the reform of the presidential nomination system is a welcome suggestion and I support the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, I wish to focus on the idea of extending voting rights to the Six Counties of Ireland and Irish citizens living abroad. Currently 115 countries have systems in place to allow emigrants to vote. Ireland is somewhat of an anomaly in this regard but there are reasons.

The hopes of a lasting reconciliation in the North could be disrupted by any attempt to draw its citizens into the political process of the Republic. Northern Ireland has been a powder keg until quite recently - too recently, in fact. Only last Friday, a live bomb had to be disarmed in the centre of Belfast in an area populated with bars and restaurants. In April, dissident republicans sank so low as to force the town of Omagh to revisit the horrors of the Troubles with the murder of Constable Ronan Kerr. The two communities which still dominate in Northern Ireland society do not represent views conducive to our system of governance here in the South.